Is A Merlin Annual Pass Worth It?

With the 2026 UK theme park season just a few days away, it thought I’d answer a question that was 12 months in the making: Is a Merlin Annual Pass worth the money?

Back in March 2025 we realised we were going to the parks more and more often, watching all the YouTubers having all the fun, while we limited ourselves to one or two trips per year courtesy of offers in The Sun or on Cadbury’s wrappers. As the offers gradually went from free tickets to £20 minimum, or with 40% off instead of 50, the costs involved felt like they were stacking to the point when it might be better to just get an annual pass. Our main worry was ‘is it worth the money’, cause they ain’t cheap!

The only way we’d know is to weigh up the pros and cons, give one a whirl and see what the savings were like. Enter Captain Spreadsheet to keep track of all our would be spends!

Quite a lot, actually. A 2026 Merlin Pass grants you access to:

• Alton Towers
• Chessington World of Adventures
• Thorpe Park
• Legoland Windsor
• Warwick Castle
• Cadbury World
• SeaLife Centres across the UK
• Legoland Discovery Centres in Manchester and Birmingham,
• Madame Tussauds in London
• The London Eye
• Shrek’s Adventure London
• York, Edinburgh and London Dungeons.

That’s no small list.

As of late 2025, all of the Blackpool based attractions (Peter Rabbit Blackpool, Madame Tussauds, Blackpool Tower Ballroom and Tower Eye) have been removed, and moving forward the Lego Group has brought the Discovery Centres back under their brand, so these may be removed at some point in the future too. But it’s still a hefty list of attractions.

Along with these, there are discounts on hotels stays, up to 20% off merchandise and food, free parking, exclusive offers and events, kids eat free at Hard Rock Cafes, free tickets/bring a friend offers, Alton Towers and Legoland Mini-golf, free or discounted fastracks, partner exclusive offers, behind the scenes tours and lift hill climbs and a lot, lot more. Some of these perks, like the tours and climbs are up-charged, and some, like free parking, are dependant on the tier of pass you hold.

Since the removal of Blackpool attractions and other behind the scenes details, passes and their perks have changed somewhat, but you still have the main 3 available:

Essential – The basic level pass. Gives access to all of the attractions, but parking is not included, has heavily blacked out dates. £139 per person

Gold – Mid-tier pass, as of this year most blackouts are lifted for this tier with only Fireworks not included. Discounts on food and merch, VIP experiences and short breaks. £239 per person.

Platinum – The big pass. All of the gold pass value, but includes Fireworks, Freestyle cup and refills, free one shot fast track per visit, 4-free bring a friend tickets per year & 1 free visit to Legoland/Towers Mini-golf per year. £299 per person

The Essential pass feels like a bargain at £139 but be aware, if you’ve got kids, they’re generally not valid for weekends and holidays. If you’re free during these times, then its a steal. For us, we chose platinum last year so we could go whenever we wanted, experience new things like After Dark, Fright Nights, Fireworks, but that is £299 each for a family of 4.

As a comparison though, for £299 you’re getting 4 parks, Warwick castle and host of other attractions. Paultons Park, their top tier annual pass is £290 per person for just the one park. Don’t get me wrong, I love Paultons Park, but for value for money you have to say a Merlin Pass wins.

There’s always a Merlin Pass sale before the season begins, and usually during the season too. One is happening as I’m writing this, making Essential £99, Gold £129, and Platinum £249. That’s a good saving, so if you want a pass, wait for a sale.

We looked into renewals for 2026, and you get around £70 discount on renewal vs a new pass. It also works out cheaper to renew than buying a pass during a sale, with a Platinum costing £229.

A new addition for passholders, is the Photo-pass, which for £100 allows you to collect all of your ride photos in all parks, on the London Eye and the other London attractions for 365 days. One park alone per day is usually £25. Details here.

We’ve just visited for the first day of the 2026 season, and as a cheeky bonus perk, Alton Towers announced that Platinum Passholders can now use the hotel guest entrance (at the back by Galactica) for the remainder of the season. So no need to trek 20 minutes if the monorail is down, you can just enter from here and jump straight in the Nemesis queue!

With a Platinum Pass, you’ll receive a goody box through the post containing your physical pass (you can still use your digital version to book online and in the parks before you get it), card holder and lanyard, a pop badge and your vouchers for Coke Freestyle cups and refills, bring a friend vouchers and Adventure golf vouchers. Last year, we also got a lanyard for the freestyle cups, but that appears to have been removed from this years offering.

Over the 12 months we had countless visits to Towers (he says countless, but has a spreadsheet, so consider them counted) including events like After Dark, Scarefest, Fireworks and Christmas, multiple trips to Thorpe Park including Fright Nights, trips to Elliott’s fave Legoland Windsor including a discounted stay in the Woodland Lodge and a visit on my Birthday over Christmas, but only a few trips to Chessington and one visit to Warwick Castle and Cadbury World. We also spent few days in London to visit SeaLife London, Shrek’s Adventure, London Eye and Madame Tussauds, and 2 or 3 trips to Legoland Discovery Centre and SeaLife in Manchester.

On to the spreadsheet… Well, when we booked in a park trip or day out, I jumped online to see how much it would have cost us to book for that day, including any parking fees. Anytime I forgot to check, I just used a similar days rate to keep it fairly accurate. Anyway, if we had made all of these trips and paid online prices or paid full price for the hotel, we would have spent £4937. Nearly five grand! Granted, we made a lot of trips to make sure we were getting our moneys worth, but five grand!!

With a trip to Towers costing around £165-£175 for 4 people including parking, make 2 trips and that’s one pass paid for, 8 trips and you’re quids in, and that’s with a platinum pass. Greater savings with Gold or Essential if used to their maximum also. £78 saved on a night in the Legoland Woodland Lodge (which was still steep at £310), used a ‘take a friend’ voucher, reducing that ticket’s cost from £37 to £19, and a spin on the London Eye which alone would have cost us £126 without the other London activities.

And lets not forget all of the discounted food, drinks (yes, you get discount at the bar in Alton Towers which makes a pint more reasonable), attraction photos, merchandise and offers we used that saved money because of this pass. 10% off and Insiders Points in the Legoland and Discovery Centre shops was a very welcome addition!

In short, yes. Very much so. But… only if you’re going to use it. If you’re a casual Merlin park goer like we were previously and one trip a year to the four parks is enough for you, then no, you can definitely find cheaper ways (newspaper vouchers, sweet wrapper offers). But, if you can and want to visit more or visit SeaLife Centres, London attractions, or Warwick Castle in the space of a year, then you should definitely consider an annual pass.

If you have a Merlin Annual Pass, you should make the most of it. For us, Towers is the closest park at about 1hr30 drive away, so got the most visits, Chessington, Legoland and Thorpe park are 3-4 hours away, so we didn’t get to take as much advantage as we’d have liked, but we still planned a few roadtrips down south and nights in random Premier Inns to get to visit them. If you’re more central to everything, then its even better.

We also like the fact that we didn’t have to spend a full day at the parks. We could go for the morning or roll in late. It didn’t matter. On one occasion we did the hour and a half drive after work on a Friday just to get some night rides in during Alton After Dark. We also had the option to split up too. Whilst our eldest and I would be braving the thrills in Thorpe Park, Jo and Elliott would be at Legoland. We even had days where we would ‘park hop’ like we were at Universal or Disney and nip to Thorpe Park for the last hour to bag a ride on Hyperia before the long drive home. It was a handy weapon in the arsenal for occasions such as this.

Well, we did a fair bit of soul searching when deciding whether to renew our passes. Not because they’re not worthwhile, just because of overall cost and questions like ‘would we go as much again this year’, or ‘should we have a year off and plan other trips instead’. And while our kids both love theme parks, they can get fed up if they’ve had too much of a good thing, so that was a factor.

But we also want to see some of the new things Merlin has in store for us for 2026, including the new coaster at Towers, Bluey: Here come the Grannies, Chessington opens Paw Patrol Land and Legoland’s refurb of Pirate Shores, along with more rides on Hyperia and more visits to Warwick Castle and Cadbury World which we really enjoyed last time! Lots of free chocolate too!

So yes, we have renewed our Merlin Platinum Pass for 2026 and booked in our first trip to Alton Towers for opening day at Alton After Dark, and I’ve got the photo-pass, so I’d expect lots of silly face-pulling pics of me on Runaway Mine Train over on our socials!

Hope this rundown of our experience helps you make a decision on a Merlin Annual Pass for your future trips.

Full details, as always, can be found on the official Merlin website!